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Updated at 11: 59 a.m.:The Sixth Floor Museum today announced the donation of nearly 2,000 archival photos from The Dallas Morning News depicting the events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The collection was officially handed over Friday, the eve of the 51st anniversary of the assassination, in a ceremonial donation. It includes 1,500 negatives and nearly 500 black and white print photographs, some never before made available to the public.

Nicola Longford, the museum’s executive director, said the museum’s first charge is to catalog and digitize the photos, which will eventually be available for public viewing online.

“This will forever be a significant resource for future generations, and we are very thankful,” Longford said.

She also praised the newspaper for its role in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination last year.

The donation comes two days after the museum announced the addition of two other Kennedy-related collections, one from former Dallas Times Herald photographer Eamon Kennedy and the other from Fort Worth Press photographer Gene Gordon.

Original post by Bruce Tomaso: The Dallas Morning News is donating to The Sixth Floor Museum 2,000 photographs from the newspaper’s coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 visit to Dallas and its aftermath.

The donation of the photo archive — about 1,500 negatives and nearly 500 black-and-white prints — will be announced later this morning in a ceremony at the museum.

Some of the photos have never been seen by the public.

The donation is being made “in the interest of preserving the history and legacy of President John F. Kennedy,” the museum said in a news release. The gift coincides with the 51st anniversary, on Saturday, of JFK’s assassination.

The museum, at 411 Elm Streeet, is in the former Texas School Book Depository, the building from which Kennedy was shot as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza.

“We’re protesting gun-free zones, especially [in places] where we’re forced to go,” said Melanie Davis of Wylie, an organizer of the demonstration.

Davis and another organizer, Tammy Koontz of Lewisville, are volunteers for the Gun Rights Across America.

“There’s no one out there working to end gun free zones,” Koontz said. “This is our take-off weekend.”

Koontz and Davis were joined by members of Come and Take It, pushing for open carry of holstered handguns, and Let’s Roll Texas, the local arm of an organization that says it’s working to uphold the Constitution.

Volunteers will gather across Dallas County on Thursday for what’s being called the “Ask Not” service day.

The day, spearheaded by County Judge Clay Jenkins, is being held in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. It will feature a few dozen volunteering opportunities hosted by cities, civic groups and school districts throughout the county.

The event’s name comes from Kennedy’s famous 1961 inauguration quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

“It’s a great way to honor President Kennedy,” Jenkins said.

The world’s attention will turn to Dallas on Friday, when officials officially commemorate Kennedy’s life and death at a special ceremony at Dealey Plaza. But county officials hope the service day will provide another tribute to Kennedy’s legacy.

County employees are participating in many of the efforts, which cover everything from helping a food bank to renovating parks. Volunteering events are being held in Richardson, Dallas, Duncanville and everywhere in between.

And Jenkins said residents are encouraged on Thursday to “perform a simple act of kindness,” even if it’s not part of one of the official events.

“Not everyone can go to the ceremony on Dealey Plaza,” Jenkins said. “But everyone can perform an act of service for their community and for their neighbor.”

For a complete list of the volunteering opportunities, please click here or see after the jump.

In my research, I learned two intriguing tales about the car from Gary Mack, curator of Dallas’ Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

Mack says that while the car was parked outside Parkland Hospital, something strange happened. There were odd reports by some hospital staff of a man in a suit inside the emergency area who asked for a bucket of water and some towels. (Here is another one.) “And the implication was that they were going to clean out the car — clean out the crime scene,” he says. The mysterious man was never identified, but Mack says “a bucket was photographed at the left rear door of the limo before being carried toward the emergency entrance.” And yet, photographs of the car’s backseat taken by the FBI after the car was flown back to Washington, D.C. reveal it does not appear to have been cleaned. Perhaps only the driver’s area was wiped down?

Mack points out one more remaining mystery connected with the car: the radio transmissions. Each vehicle in the motorcade that day was patched into a radio network, and he says the Secret Service was monitoring the chatter from a room at the Adolphus Hotel. The transmissions were being fed to Air Force One and, presumably, the White House Communications Agency. “Where are the tapes? No one knows,” Mack says. “The tapes could be important if, as one of the agents in the limo testified, he was on his radiotelephone during some of the assassination and his microphone could have picked up the sounds of the shots.” Mack shared this information with the Assassination Records Review Board during its 1994 research stop in Dallas when they took testimony from several people. He says the board looked into it, but never could get a straight answer. “Now, you could assume that the Secret Service doesn’t want secrets out. Well, procedural things, sure. But it opens up the door to reasonable doubt. And that’s why people are still so fascinated with this subject because parts of it, to this day, just don’t make sense.”

Nearly half a century ago, J. Waymon Rose was a reluctant front-seat observer to one of the most compelling criminal cases in U. S. history.

The traveling furniture salesman was picked as the tenth juror in the Jack Ruby trial. At the urging of his wife, he recorded his thoughts about what was happening in a spiral notebook.

The 50-page handwritten diary was donated to the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in 2002. Three scrapbooks of newspaper and magazine clippings that his late wife kept also were recently donated to the Museum’s collection.

Rose will talk about the trial, his diary and his late wife’s scrapbook at 2 p.m. Saturday as part of the Museum’s 2013 Living History Series.